Everyone has heard of the CN Tower in Toronto. It is classified as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World and to go up the tower is the most touristy thing you can do there. And so we did! After spending some time at the Sheconnect Conference, W and I left for the CN Tower, which was literally next door to the conference centre.

They have an Inukshuk built outside the entrance!

Tickets to go up to the Observatory deck is $23.99 but I found a coupon online for 20% off! Heheh.

The effect in this hallway is so cool. The image is in 3D and as you walk by the wispy blue things in the picture move with you.

Is this a security screening? It just puffs air at you?

The displays on our way to the elevators.

Did you know that lightning strikes the CN Tower an average of 75 times per year?

Oh another moose!

Looking down at the giftshop.

Waiting for the ride up up up!

The elevator happens to have a glass floor area too. You can see how far up you are getting from the ground. O_o

Looking out made me realize how BIG a city Toronto is. Vancouver is so small in comparison.

There's Lake Ontario to the left, covered in cloud. I'm glad we went when we did since in the morning the whole tower was covered in cloud and we probably wouldn't have been able to see anything. So lucky it cleared up later in the day!

Eeep! Standing on the glass floor. I didn't feel that scared really. We also took some pictures of us lying down but we look like we're dead so...no.

Vancouver is 3,366 km away from the CN Tower.

While the WCG tournament was going on in the Metrotown atrium, a little way off was Microsoft's popup store for their new Surface tablet, which opened on Oct 26th! I've heard lots about this tablet and was curious, as was everyone else, to see what it can do.

The popup shop drew lots of crowds, everyone was vying to try out the newest tablet on the market.

Is it a tablet or a laptop? It's almost powerful enough to be a small laptop, yet light enough to be a tablet.

To the side of the popup shop, the Microsoft Surface Events team gave a demonstration of the tablet and showcased its capabilities with the new Windows RT.

The team even gave away a XBox to a lucky person after the presentation! (It wasn't me)

The tablet by itself without the Touch Cover is priced at $519. It comes in 32GB without ($519) or with ($619) the Touch Cover and 64GB with the touch cover ($719). The thin cover acts as a keyboard for those who like that physical feel as opposed to a soft keyboard on screen. Very cool but I was a little disappointed that you had to pay extra for the Touch Cover. I was under the impression before it launched that it came with it. Oh well.

With all the Windows programs that run on the Surface, I can see how it can be very useful to use in productive applications. It's kind of like a hybrid between a laptop and a tablet. I'm impressed! Adding this to my Christmas wishlist... ;P

Over the weekend, the World Cyber Games 2012 held a tournament at Metrotown to determine the best player to represent the Western Canada in the WCG Grand Final in China. Samsung is the sponsor for this exciting competition and so all the competitors faced off on seriously powerful Series 7 Gaming Laptops.

Look at these impressive monitors! The gamers are competing on the Samsung Series 7 Gaming Laptop which is specifically built for gaming.

There was a large Samsung Smart TV set up where you could play some Angry Birds behind the spectators.

Also on display were other Samsung products. I was most interested in the super light Series 9 laptop. This one is running Windows 8, which also came out just recently.

Inside the Samsung Store was a big screen projecting the FIFA 12 game, which also had a tournament earlier in the day.

I managed to catch the very last face-off of StarCraft 2!

Optikzero vs...

FireZerg. These guys are seriously talented. Their fingers just fly across the keyboard making split second decisions in real time. Starcraft 2 is a scifi game that requires real time strategy and people are really serious about this game. It's like playing chess but harder because there are so many other variables. There are many high stakes tournaments held around the world for this game and in Korea, there is even a TV show where you can watch professional players compete!

In the end there can be only one winner. And the victory went to FireZerg! His real name is Sam Prowse and he's a 19-year-old second-year student at UBC. He will now be representing the West Coast in the WCG Grand Final in Kunshan, China! Good luck Sam!

Day 2 in Toronto started with a conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre! I had won some tickets to the ShesConnected Conference courtesy of Home of Ohm and I happened to be in Toronto at the time so I was pretty excited for the chance to attend!

Just outside the building, giant woodpeckers are wrecking havoc on this log.

The convention centre was also right next to the CN Tower, which we planned to check out later.

This moose was on the main floor of the conference centre.

The place is actually pretty big, it goes several floors down!

Here we are heading to registration to pick up our passes and swag bags! As part of our registration, we also get a SCCTO t-shirt with our Twitter handle on it! Great idea for Tweetups! We arrived kind of late, people were already in the networking session inside the main presentation room, so we decided to look around.

Ford Canada was the main sponsor for the conference and on display was their new C-MAX hybrid car. It looks very nice and roomy too!

The place most hopping was the McCafe Lounge where McDonalds reps were serving your choice of coffee, massages, and answering questions via Toshiba laptops! Attendees were also able to sign up for a mug with their Twitter handle printed on it! So cool!

Iögo also served delicious yogurt for breakfast!

Soon after, W and I split up to attend the presentations we were interested in. I attended the session on how PR Companies select bloggers while W went to learn about how to be successful on Facebook.

After our presentations were over, it was lunch time! SCCTO also provided attendees with lunch! We had the choice of vegetarian or non-veggie sandwich box.

Inside, there was a Horiataki Salad with Feta, an apple, and a Granola Bar.

I chose the Smoked Turkey sandwich, which contained roasted apples, cranberry relish, smoked Gouda on Artisan Bread. Really yummy! The box contained all the food groups! They like to keep us healthy. =)

As you can see there were a lot of women attending SCCTO! The Blissdom Canada conference happened to in Toronto on the same weekend and an SCCTO sponsor called it the women's empowerment weekend. Hahaha!

While eating our lunch, we listened to Kate White, author and former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine, give a talk about her new book “I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know”. She lives by the words "Go big or go home". I learned a lot from her talk! Things like how you shouldn't be afraid to ask for what you want and how to turn envy into something positive.

We walked around some more to look at all the other sponsors and brands at the conference before we left. I wish we had had more time to spend at the conference. I would have liked to do some more networking and meet other bloggers! Perhaps later next year...or maybe even early next year! Because the ShesConnected conference is coming to Vancouver for the first time in February! I can't wait!